In terms of piracy that Lessig mentions, I agree with YiHan’s assessment. Speaking to my cousins in China, they said that if the CDs were actually sold at $15 a CD, no one would actually buy them and people would find other means of secretly pirating the songs. More likely, a fan of the CD who wants to support the artist will go out and spend the extra money on the CD.

The way the RIAA targets people who download music is not good for the music industry itself. Since the probability of a single person getting sued is incredibly low, the unlucky person who does will feel like it is very unfair and be very defensive and try to fight back. They will also probably be able to find a large group of sympathizers. Without getting too political, this is kind of like the draft. For most wars in the 20th century, a high percentage of one’s peers were drafted so one was more likely to obey the government if he was called to fight. However, I feel like if the draft were reinstated right now (when the US population is much larger) a person who gets drafted will feel like they are the only one who is and will more likely disobey.

Also, it is unfair that the guitar lessons were pulled from YouTube. I agree that after hearing the Rolling Stones song you are more likely to go out and buy it or maybe even the sheet music. It is just sad how many people’s creativity has to be stifled because they need to first check whether any of the content they put up is possibly borrowed. I think people should be able to cite audio and video the same way they cite ideas in research papers.

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If you want to know why almost everything happens and who is responsible, follow the money trail. It always comes back to the exact same thing...who can afford the lawyers? It is so discouraging because after all of these years, it is worse and not better. I'm not really sure how to come up with a solution to the problem.

Referencing is not stealing. That is all that the Simpson's clip was. They only showed enough of the episode to allow the viewer to associate themselves with the idea that the guy was watching the Simpson's. They weren't even trying to re-air the episode for their own benefit.

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Here's the url to the wisc.edu version of docs: https://www.google.com/a/wisc.edu/

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field trip sounds terrific

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the web address it www.wwtdd.com

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I think that the internet as a whole is almost a form of collective intelligence. Anyone can put up a website about just about anything. What is really mediating collective intelligence is the search engines. Nothing else really stops one website from getting more hits than another. For the most part, our generation has been participating in collective intelligence and therefore the idea of collective culture since we were little.

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I watched the show for a few seasons too. While you could do an episode guide on your blog, these kinds of texts are usually done on Wikipedia or on a fan wiki site. For instance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_JAG_episodes

http://www.jagfans.net/community/

I'm glad you brought this up because it really helps us to discuss how blogs versus, say, wikis are being used. Checkout the fan site.

It seems like blogs or discussion boards are good places for discussions about tv shows, though. Is there, maybe, a current tv show you could review and make space for other fans to participate?

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